National Data Privacy Day 2012

"Data Privacy Day is an annual international celebration designed to promote awareness about privacy and education about best privacy practices." Find out more at
Data Privacy Day | Stay Safe Online. Information about the U.S. Government and data privacy can be found here and also specifically about the Census Bureau(here).Check out the #DataPrivacyDay hashmark on Twitter for more information and loads of additional resources.

September 11th Resources

This is an unorganized and in-process list of 9/11 resources, including digital archives, essays, scholarly journal articles, teaching resources, and more. (I'm not listing resources available through WSU Libraries catalogs and databases.)

• 9/11 Memorial Museum - includes teaching resources
• Bill Lucey's 9/11: 10-Year Anniversary Guide of Facts, Stats and Historic Footnotes

• The Encyclopedia of 9/11 - New York Magazine
• United in Remembrance, Divided over Policies: 10 Years after 9/11 - Pew Research Center for the People and the Press  
• Using Census Data to Track Change Since September 11, 2001 - via the Pew Research Center 
• Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive (The Internet Archive)

• Events that Changed the World: Scholarly Content on the Impact of 9/11 - free book chapters and journal articles from academic publisher Wiley-Blackwell
• Social Science Research Network: 10 Years after September 11
• In the days immediately following 9/11/01, the Council invited a wide range of leading social scientists to write short essays for an online forum. Ten years later, these same contributors have been asked to reflect on what has changed and what remains the same.
• The Browser: 9/11, 10 Years On (links to excellent long-form articles) 
• Issue Guide: Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks - Council on Foreign Relations

• Access to Dangerous Knowledge: Reflections on 9/11 Ten Years Later -  Peter Suber in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter
• The September 11 Digital Archive: Saving the Histories of September 11th, 2001 
• Library of Congress Web Archives: September 11, 2001 Web Archive
• Cartoonists Remember: September 11, 2001-2011
• The New York Times: Articles about September 11th
•  Witness and Response: September 11thAcquisitions at the Library of Congress 
• Revisiting 9/11: Unpublished Photos by James Nachtwey  (Time)

  Resources | Teaching and Learning About 9/11 With The New York Times 

...

"Topics: The debt crisis in the European Monetary Union as seen by a 9-year old, and US recession risks" (with Lego Minifigures!)

Read the full post here (from Felix Salmon's blog at Reuters). The original source, an Eye on the Market column by J.P. Morgan's Michael Cembalest [Topics: The debt crisis in the European Monetary Union as seen by a 9-year old, and US recession risks] can be found here (pdf) - its *really* worth a look!

 

SSRC: 'Too Much Information:' International Affairs, Political Science and the Public Sphere

"To what extent is the inability of political science, international relations, area studies, social science, academia—pick your university problem—to engage effectively with the public sphere a reflection not just of our own foibles, but also of the larger world in which we operate–that is, the public sphere itself? What if our trials are merely a part–a symptom–of a larger environmental change in the way the “public” interacts with authorities like professors, generals, senators, journalists? And insofar as they are, what accounts for that environmental change, that general circumstance, which might contribute to the frailty of all these institutions?" -- from - Too Much Information:' International Affairs, Political Science and the Public Sphere

Note: Check out the other posts in the SSRC's Transformations in the Public Sphere essay forum - there are some really interesting essays available (and SSRC is a free institutional repository of scholarly policy writing).

Super-PACs and Dark Money: ProPublica’s Guide to the New World of Campaign Finance - ProPublica

Super-PACs and Dark Money: ProPublica’s Guide to the New World of Campaign Finance - ProPublica:

"The chief umpire in this game—the Federal Election Commission—is still struggling to write the rules for the hodgepodge of strange-sounding groups feeding the system. 527s? Super-PACs? Even Super-Duper PACs? ProPublica decided a guide is in order."

Cool - A "Do-It-Yourself Redistricting Kit" for Washington State...that might get *used*!

"The Redistricting Commission wants to know what you think about redrawing the legislative and congressional lines in Washington state.
You can submit your own redistricting plan. All plans are due by August 15, 2011." Read the rest here

I love this! I'll be working on the Lorena Redistricting Plan over the next month...what a great way to brush up on my Google Earth skills and think a little about what redistricting is all about...

Zotero Class: June 29th (Managing Your References/Citations/More)

Upcoming Drop-In Zotero class
Tuesday, June 29th  9am - 11:30am, Terrell 105 (just inside from the CUB tunnel)

More later in the summer? Contact me if you'd like to set one up.

Also, if anyone is interested in EndNote as an alternative, my colleague Jane Scales teaches those classes (see summer schedule below). Sign up here 

What's Zotero? 

Collecting, Managing and Citing Reference Resources with Zotero:

A Hands-On Workshop

This hands-on class will introduce you to Zotero, a free, open source alternative to reference manager systems such as EndNote and ProCite. Zotero allows you to easily save webpages and articles found in library subscription databases such as Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, JSTOR, and PubMed, as well as bibliographic details, PDFs or other files, comments/notes, and indexing terms. Saved PDFs are searchable. When you are ready to write, you can use Zotero to integrate your references into your work in many citation styles using MS Word or OpenOffice. References can be backed up, and can be shared between computers and even with other people over the Web.

Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Research and Development on Urban Systems (Freely Accessable eBook)

Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Research and Development on Urban Systems (via The National Academies)

"More than half of the world's people now live in cities. In the United States, the figure is 80 percent. It is worthwhile to consider how this trend of increased urbanization, if inevitable, could be made more sustainable. One fundamental shortcoming of urban research and programs is that they sometimes fail to recognize urban areas as systems. Current institutions and actors are not accustomed to exploring human-environment interactions, particularly at an urban-scale. The fact is that these issues involve complex interactions, many of which are not yet fully understood. Thus a key challenge for the 21st century is this: How can we develop sustainable urban systems that provide healthy, safe and affordable environments for the growing number of Americans living in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas?

To address this question, the National Research Council organized a workshop exploring the landscape of urban sustainability research programs in the United States. The workshop, summarized in this volume, was designed to allow participants to share information about the activities and planning efforts of federal agencies, along with related initiatives by universities, the private sector, nongovernmental groups, state and local agencies, and international organizations. Participants were encouraged to explore how urban sustainability can move beyond analyses devoted to single disciplines and sectors to systems-level thinking and effective interagency cooperation. To do this, participants examined areas of potential coordination among different R&D programs, with special consideration given to how the efforts of federal agencies can best complement and leverage the efforts of other key stakeholders. Pathways to Urban Sustainability offers a broad contextual summary of workshop presentations and discussions for distribution to federal agencies, regional organizations, academic institutions, think tanks and other groups engaged in urban research."

Medvedev Thanks Angry Birds Creator

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev thanked the Angry Birds maker on Friday for creating a game that is highly popular with government officials.
 
'Before talking politics, I would like to thank Mr. [Peter] Vesterbacka for creating an occupation for a huge number of officials who now know what to do in their free and not-so-free time. I saw them [playing the game] myself many times,'" Full article here , via RiaNovosti.

Smartphone Apps for Keeping Up with Congress

From the In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress blog:

There’s a Congressional App for That

 "I recently got a new smart phone and have started exploring apps that can help me keep up with Congress and do my job (Andrew has mentioned a couple before). I’ve compiled a sampling of apps for various devices. What’s your favorite app for getting in touch or keeping up with Congress?"
    Click here to see the rest of the post.